


Seed

by PermianExtinction



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Averting the Galactic Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Cosmic Horror Lite, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Force-Sensitive Rax, Over Multiple Incarnations, Sci-Fi Explanations of the Force No One Asked For, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PermianExtinction/pseuds/PermianExtinction
Summary: "So begins the chain reaction that will destroy everything. The planet will soon begin to crack. It shall break apart. It'll swallow the Empireandthe New Republic fleets and soldiers whole. When it does, it will leave this galaxy to the scavengers and the scum, rotting like a fruit forgotten in the dirt. Though an idle thought troubles him:All fruit, no matter how rotten, can leave behind seeds..."A canon divergence fic made of fictober prompts.





	1. Chapter 1

Sand grains dig into the skin of Sloane’s jaw. Her ears are turning all sounds into a fuzzy distant roar. The sharp pains in her fingers and stomach keep toppling her thoughts as they try to stand up. She dreams she herself stands up, wakes to where she lies on the ground. Each attempt to move is dismissed as another dream. The dreams of herself are overlapping, these immaterial spectral Sloanes rising from her body and dissipating quickly. The more of them leave her, the number she becomes.

 _This is what death feels like_ , she thinks, over and over. She can’t quite finish the end of the thought, so it keeps starting from the beginning. And this must indeed be what death feels like. Because there can be nothing beyond life, there is no sleep. She is dead, but she is frozen in time. Her mind ends here, so her mind remains here.

But perhaps she is wrong — there is something new. It presses against her shoulder.

“No one has come for you.” He sounds… surprised? Or is it uneasy?

Good, she thinks. I never asked them to. 

“Your companion, the rebel. He is ungrateful.”

Or simply cares more about saving the New Republic fleet from destruction, than saving one person, a former enemy.

“You’re a fool,” Sloane wheezes. “You’ve already _lost_. No weapon. No way out.”

Rax’s grip clenches around her shoulder, digging into her flesh. His voice hisses in her ear. “So this is what it is. You, nobly sacrificing yourself to distract me."

Unbelievable. He’s making this into such a pretty story. It has nothing to do with sacrifice.

Suddenly, he’s not so menacing, not even with the stabs of agony he has inflicted on her. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know how anything works, anything in the universe. He’s playacting. He thinks this is opera, and someone has missed their cue. 

She isn’t as injured as she thought. There’s a reserve of energy left in her. She holds it down until it’s ready to —

Sloane surges up, ignoring the howling pain in her gut, twists around and shoves Rax over backwards, slamming him against the ground. She hears a choked _oof_ from him as his lungs expel air. For a second, he’s wide-eyed in shock. A bit of blood is drying over his lips from his swollen, broken nose. That’s all she needs.

She claws at his collar with her good hand, jabbing a knee into his stomach. “ _THIS IS REAL!_ ” she screams in his face, flecks of her own spit misting his skin. “ _All of this is real!_ ” She grabs his right ear and twists it sharply. “Can you feel this? Can you?”

Rax yelps and gasps. And that’s all he does. The rest of his body is frozen.

“This isn’t a game, you rotten, sniveling little brat! We’re not playing star wars today, Galli!”

He tries to shake his head, tries to pull away from her.

She snatches one of the medals off his chest, tears it away and hurls it across the floor. “The game’s _over!_ It’s over! You got people hurt! Brat! Wretched orphan brat!”

“Let me go!” he wails.

Sloane shoves his head away, scrambling off him and stumbling to her feet. She finds her balance against a wall, heaving in breaths.

And Rax is jolting upright as well, face contorting with venomous rage as he comes back to his senses. He pulls his uniform jacket down from the hem, trying to get the wrinkles to straighten out. “ _You—!“_ he seethes, eyes bulging words strangled by his own fury.

“ _Me!_ ” Sloane shrieks back. _Yes, me, I pulled the curtain down, I spoiled your fun. How does betrayal taste?_

“If you’re quite finished,” someone says.

Sloane raises her chin and peers through a veil of bedraggled curls.

At the entrance of the room, at the top of the steps, Norra Wexley waits with her blaster out and pointed forward. And then — she’s not alone. A pair of New Republic soldiers step through the door, flanking her.

Sloane points desperately at the caped man backing away with hunted eyes and twitching hands, like he wants to tear the newcomers to shreds. “That’s him. That’s— That’s Rax. He’s the one who…”

Rax stares at Sloane. Whether he’s thinking this or not, she realizes — if he’s captured, he can tell them all just how much she planned and schemed with him. He must have a record. It could be salvaged from the wreck of the _Ravager_. Their conversations about Chandrila, about the surprise attack. Authorized by the highest ranking officer. That would be the Grand Admiral, wouldn’t it? 

 _That’s why you had to kill him_ , her mind points out.  _Tell them to kill him. He’s dangerous. He’s got a hidden weapon. He’s about to—_

“My husband is shutting down this facility,” Norra informs them. “And we found your getaway ship. If you don’t want them all killed, you should tell those children you brainwashed to stand down, too.”

Sloane edges closer to the steps, shoulder sliding along the rough wall. _Come on, Norra, I’m your ally_. _I’m on your side. Keep your sights on him_. 

She has to get her hands on that blaster. She has to kill Rax herself.

They won’t let her get away, they’ll take her and put her on trial with the rest of them. After Chandrila, Sloane can’t face that sea of hate-filled faces again. The judging crowd. _We know what you did, we know what you tried to do._

 _This isn’t a game_ , she thinks. _We don’t play by any rules. This is real._

Sloane hurls herself forward. 

The butt of the gun slams into the side of her head. Her skull rings as she goes down. Everyone is shouting at once, and she can’t make out any of what is said. 

A boot is pressing down on her sternum. Sloane gags and peels her eyelids open. Norra is standing over her, pointing the blaster right between her eyes.

“I knew it,” the woman snarls, but her eyes are pinched with misery. “It _was_ you, you lied—” 

Sloane cringes. _It’s not what you think—_ But what else could it look like?

Then Norra jerks her chin up, and the barrel of the blaster, aiming it away from Sloane. A shot sears through the air.

Gallius Rax screams and drops to one knee, clutching his thigh, which has a smoking, charred hole in it. Momentum carries him forward, he has to catch himself with one arm. Those two shah-tezh pieces scrape on the stone — such a grating, awful sound. He’s still holding them tightly, like they’re glued to his fingers.

 _An opening_ , Sloane thinks. She doesn’t know which are her enemies and which are her allies anymore, but whether he meant to or not, Rax’s ill-fated attack has given her a chance to strike. 

But she’s too weak, too woozy. She tries to grab Norra’s ankle, and the woman’s boot kicks under her chin, shoving her away

“That’s enough, Grand Admiral,” Norra snaps, stepping back. “I _promise_ I will shoot you if you move another muscle.” Her eyes shift. “And you as well.”

Rax stops crawling towards them. He’s just a meter away, reaching for Sloane. What does he think he’s playing at?

“ _Sloane_ ,” he rasps. “We can still—”

“Frag off,” she whispers, before passing out completely.


	2. Chapter 2

For the second time today, Sloane’s wrists are cinched together in a pair of binders. A hot wind hits her face when she steps out of the underground bunker. They’re in the middle of a sandstorm; she tastes silica on her tongue before she clamps her lips shut.

The ground hasn’t stopped quaking. 

Norra growls and shoves her from behind. “Keep _walking_. The shuttle is right up ahead. You’ll find it when you trip over the ramp.”

“It doesn’t _feel_ like Brentin sealed the borehole,” Sloane hisses. “Does it?”

“You’re planning something. You think you’re fooling anyone? People like you have no imagination.”

“Of course I’m planning something!” Sloane spits out sand. “Planning not to die.”

The howling wind increases in intensity. Norra and the soldiers with her shield their eyes. Then a terrible grinding noise accompanies a wide rift cracking the ground close enough that they can all see it through the storm. Sloane scrambles away from it, as it widens into a gaping hole.

“It does seem to be getting worse!” one of the soldiers shouts.

“Did you say your shuttle was—“

Metallic creaking, and then a hulking shadowy shape punctuated by lights on its sides lurches forward out of the brown haze, tipping towards the crevasse.

“Damn it all!” Norra grabs Sloane by the back of her shirt and drags her into the facility, then slams the door shut. She shouts into her comm— “Take off, take off already! It’s no use!” 

Rax has been trailing behind limping up the steps with his hands pressed to the back of his head. Sloane jerks her chin in his direction, scowling. 

“I bet he knows how to turn it off.”

By the console banks, Brentin Wexley waits for the others, gnawing on his lower lip, holding back shame and fear.

“I’m sorry, I thought I had it under control! I’ve been trying every button in the place I can find, but I don’t even think they _do_ anything—!”

Norra waves Sloane towards the far side of the chamber, towards the other soldiers and Rax, and approaches Brentin, placing a tentatively reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Don’t panic, just… let me look at it.”

“I really think we haven’t got the time, Norra Wexley,” Sloane barks. She’s well aware that the lingering pain of her injuries have made her mushy-brained, after she let panic make such an idiotic decision for her. That said, she has a right to demand expediency when they’re all about to die. 

Beside her, Rax’s gaze is unfocused, staring off into the middle distance, in the vague direction of the passage that led to the final chamber, with the borehole. A voiced huff of air leaves through his nostrils. It’s too close to a laugh for Sloane’s peace of mind.

“Get that damned madman to reverse whatever he’s done,” she says.

“And now you put your faith in a damned madman,” Rax says, tone a mocking melody, still not looking at her, or at anyone.

“You’re right,” Sloane snaps. “How can I trust you?” She’s assuming that Rax isn’t keen on dying today. The more she reflects on past events the more the foundations of that assumption start to crack and crumble.

Just like the earth, all around them.

“How can _we_ trust _you?_ ” Brentin echoes. When he looks at Rax, suppressed emotions fight to break through his mask of dutiful worry. And when he looks at Sloane, the same emotions keep on battering his defenses.

Sloane’s knees weaken. What rises to her own surface is crushing shame. Perhaps she’d rather see this whole planet go out like a firework than face another second of this.

“You can’t,” she croaks. “You can’t. Just don’t throw away a good idea because I had it first. Brentin, believe _this_. I don’t want to die.”

Brentin turns to Norra, shrugging helplessly. “I think we have to—“

Rax shifts and steps forward, while the other soldiers track him with their weapons.

“Yes,” he says, eyes raking over all of them. “It appears that you do.”

Even with one leg hobbled, Rax strides with slow, predatory confidence towards the console banks. And this infuriates Sloane — she hopes he doesn’t have a plan, but even if he did, he could try to _hide_ it. For once try not to act like he’s plotting numerous nefarious deeds. Or maybe he does want to kill everybody, himself included. 

“How ironic. The New Republic calling on the Operator’s services one last time.” He grins pitilessly. Perhaps a grimace, hiding pain, but he does it well. “Operating this facility, that is. So will that be all? Shut down the sequence and still the planet’s core. I could simply delay it, let enough of your ships escape. And the Empire will fall, just as you’ve wanted.”

“I’ve wanted to shoot holes in your limbs until they look like aerated nerf cheese,” Brentin tells Rax quietly, as he steps away from the console. “So don’t try anything clever.”

Even Norra gives him a strange look. But then she half-smiles. A bit of pride left for a man Sloane knows must be hard for her to trust.

Norra still loves her husband, doesn’t she? Sloane admits she’d felt a tickle of possessive attachment for her traveling companion, but even that half-smile, that one glance, tells Sloane that everything she has felt was cheap and hollow and selfish.

She doesn’t know who she might have ever glanced at like that, spared a smile for at the end of the world.

The soldiers are muttering to each other, and Sloane tries to pick up what they’re saying. One speaks up before she needs to eavesdrop more effectively.

“The redheaded Imp took off with the children. They fought off their guards and, well. They’re gone. Got out right as the storm started tearing our own ships to pieces.”

Another New Republic soldier — oh, who is Sloane kidding, they’re still rebel scum, they’ll always be — adds, “Admiral Ackbar gave the order to pull out. But the Imperial forces aren’t letting us go! They’re still dragging our ships down! Even they must realize something’s wrong, the storm’s growing, the whole plateau is crumbling, they’re saying you can see it from orbit. Those crazy bastards really want to die!” 

Sloane’s palms sweat, and itch as a result. She struggles to wipe them on her trousers. The binders they’ve put her in are ordinary metal, no energy binding to disrupt with a bit of sand. 

She thinks about that, and the conclusion is obvious. _Rax meant for us to escape_ , she thinks. _No shortage of sand on Jakku_.

What does that mean for his plan, then, that he lured her here? What is he planning now?

As he lays his hands to the controls, Rax hums the first five notes of a tune Sloane still recognizes. His blasted beloved _Cora Vessora_.

Stone dust crumbles off the cracking ceiling and pours onto the floor. And is the air getting hotter?

Rax pauses, and clasps his hands behind his back. “But of course I’m not _too_ amenable.”

The whole chamber shudders violently, and a thunderous crack and crash reverberates from somewhere further underground.

“My conditions are this,” he says, and the haughty sneer that always means trouble returns to play at the corners of his lips. “I deactivate the self-destruct mechanism. Save your precious fleet,” his eyes dart towards Sloane, “and _hers_. What’s left of them.” His face turns upward, he closes his eyes. “You’ll leave a ship behind with supplies.”

Of course he’s going to escape. Sloane’s anger is dangerously close to overflowing, the way Jakku is bubbling its magma to the surface. Again she thinks, _I have to kill him, now_. Can she grab a blaster with her hands shackled together? She would make such an utter fool of herself if she tried that again. 

She tries to catch first Brentin’s, then Norra’s eye. Surely they can’t bear to let Rax get away.

“Right,” Norra says. As bitterly as she can, but she sounds resigned. Sloane prays that she’s simply pretending to go along with these demands. Survive first, betray him later. “Take what you need. The New Republic thanks you for your services.”

“You’re welcome,” Rax smirks. “Wexley, isn’t it? I heard your efforts on Akiva earned you a medal.”

Sloane might not be able to kill him yet, but she’d love to spit on his shirt again.

Rax holds up a finger. “One of your _fastest_ ships, preferably. You won’t track us, or pursue us.”

“Who is ‘us’?” Sloane breathes. Her stomach churns. Hux has already gone. He can’t mean—

Rax nods thoughtfully, as if it’s such a fascinating philosophical question. Then he presses his palms together, smiling. “Grand Admiral Sloane will remain with me.”

 _Grand Admiral Sloane will not remain with him!_ Grand Admiral Sloane thinks furiously.

“No.” Louder— “ _No!_ I am not— I’m not with him. You can’t do this.”

She can’t become part of his plan. Not again. It doesn’t matter what that plan is; what she hated most of all was feeling like a prop, like a chess piece.

Both Wexleys show signs of visible upset; Norra adjusts her grip on her blaster and Brentin shakes his head slightly, whispering something under his breath.

Sloane stares at the ground between her shoes. Admits to herself — she’s terrified of either option. Being carted off by the New Republic, used as a prop to drag the Empire through the dirt, whether they play her up as a villain or a sympathetic face. No matter what they do, her image will belong to them and their story. Just as it had with Rax. Is that what he wants out of her again, or would he prefer revenge? 

It’s like she’s being sold.

Her head snaps up. _I won’t do this_ , she thinks. _I will die first_. Her own certainty puts her at ease; she finds calm in the totality of her rage.

Brentin plants his feet firmly. “I’m not saying she’s on our side. But she’s not on his side. You haven’t even seen what he’s… what he’s _like_. We’d be handing her over to a monster. And you— _I_ know what the Empire does to its prisoners. What he did to me!”

“I know.” Norra struggles, visibly, with her own anger, and focuses on the only certainty left for her. “But it doesn’t matter. Imperial rivalries are none of our damn business!”

“I didn’t join the Rebellion to mind my own business! The Empire would still reign if people minded their own business! I’ve heard enough, this ends now.” Brentin points at Rax, fuming. “If you want us to betray our principles, I can start with you.”

“No, Brentin, the Empire fell because it ruined enough people’s lives, tore enough families apart! I want to do the right thing as much as you but I’m not going to risk the lives of our comrades — or, or the lives of everyone on this planet, who never asked for any of this — over a woman who threw our son off a roof—!”

Brentin Wexley flinches, and slowly turns his head to stare at Sloane.

 _Fine_ , Sloane thinks. _Hate me, if it makes it easier._ She hadn’t expected them to take her side in the end, not with so much at stake.

Based on Rax’s patient silence, eyes tracking each speaker, he’s sure he’ll get what he wants. He’s probably right. He returns his attention to the console, playing a final electronic motif of whirs and beeps.


	3. Chapter 3

Stepping outside once more, Sloane is unnerved by how the air is still. The sky is too blue and too clear, and the ground has become a shifting mess of dunes from the storm raining down all the sand it picked up. But the narrowly averted apocalypse has left its mark. Deep cracks in the ground fracture the landscape as far as the eye can see.

On the horizon, fat streaks of fire still clash with falling ships, the battle’s din — crashes and explosions and shrieking plasma and moaning metal — carrying across the wasteland.

Rax leans against an outcrop of rock — the plateau is dotted with jagged, toothy rocks, but the sandstorm has thinned them, blasted them into wicked points. His thigh has bled enough to dye his trouser leg crimson. As Sloane watches, Rax tears the uniform away from the injury, then rips a long strip of fabric from his cape and binds it tightly around the wound.

Grinning all the while. Panting heavily, tongue clamped between his teeth, but he doesn’t cry out or even whimper. It must hurt, through; his balance wavers when he ties the first knot, like he’s that close to passing out.

Sloane turns away, and stares at her hands. They’ve taken the binders off, but now she misses how they hid the unnatural angle two of her fingers are bent in.

Can she stay just as quiet, setting them back in place? One those soldiers Norra brought with her gave her painkillers after she woke up, the kind that replaces most sensations in your body with a frothing buzz, until you accept that your flesh has been replaced with a swarm of insects. Keeps you crawling on bloody stumps of limbs, but it doesn’t last long.

The New Republic transport ship, the one that must have brought reinforcements, comes roaring in overhead, putting down struts.

Its landing is momentarily deafening. Sloane grabs the fourth and fifth fingers on her left hand and yanks hard.

Maybe she screams — no one can prove it.

Her vision is nothing but red blotches for a good ten seconds. Something steadies her, a hand on her shoulder.

“I won’t forgive you if you tried to kill Temmin,” Brentin Wexley is saying quietly. “I’m not doing this because I owe you, either.”

“Feel guilty?” she slurs, dizzy with pain. “About handing me off to Rax? You think he’ll torture me or shove a chip in my brain, or just kill me?”

“Don’t worry about that. We still have time to save you. What’s he going to do?” Brentin steps back and nods to Norra.

What _is_ he going to do, Sloane wonders. Rax gave up his last bargaining chip when he shut down the mechanism.

A gout of steam bursts out of the ground, right under Norra’s feet, flinging her back towards the nearest crevasse.

“ _Norra!_ ” Brentin sprints over the sand, flinging himself down to catch Norra’s arm before she slides into the yawning pit. She’s groaning, skin red with burns.

Rax’s arm cinches around Sloane’s waist and pulls her against his chest. He’s wearing a manic, savage grin.

Sloane can’t breathe, it doesn’t feel like the air moving through her lungs counts for anything. How is any of this happening?

Her captor waves a hand towards the soldiers. More steam explodes out of the earth to send them flying, huge jets that billow up into the sky. 

Rax lets out a jubilant scream. “This is _my_ homeworld!”

_He really is a monster,_ Sloane thinks, quaking with horror.

The ground quakes, too.

“Did you really think it would be as easy as pushing a few buttons? The Emperor built this facility before he built the _Empire!_ And he built it for _me!”_

A plume of molten rock bursts from the biggest crack in the ground, the one that opened the last time they came outside. For a second it looks like it’s going to fall over the Wexleys and burn them to a cinder, but then it crashes back down into the pit. Norra and Brentin struggle to their feet.

Of course Rax betrayed them. Hadn’t he _said_ he could delay the explosion? _And we still fell for it!_ Sloane thinks.

Horror abates, rage surges to take its place. Doesn’t matter what he is or what he can do. Sloane is a heartbeat away from reaching down and twisting his genitals into a knot; he’s left himself open for that, and it would take him down and hurt exactly as much as he deserves. Would that doom them all to a fiery destruction? Wouldn’t it still be worth it?

So why has she gone so limp? Why is she letting him drag her towards the transport? He’s only got one good leg, and she feels his weight pressing against her back; he’s leaning on _her,_ using her as a crutch.

Her tongue is loose, words overflowing. “I hate you,” she gasps.

Rax hisses close enough that his teeth scrape her ear. “I know you do. Come with me anyway. At least you’ll live.”

She’s sure she doesn’t _want_ to live, yet she goes with him. Some fragment of her mind has accepted this fate. It wants to give in. _Let go. Let him hold you. He wants you, isn’t that enough?_

The enemy is scattering, terrified. She’s seeing real power unleashed at last. In her chest, a faint but steadily building exhilaration. No, _admiration_.

_This is what you’ve been trained to do. You swore allegiance to the Empire. No Empire without an Emperor._

Rebels are the ones with the nerve to fight power-crazed ideologues wielding terrifying sorcery. Loyal officers are the ones who do their bidding.

The sand under her feet becomes sloping metal. They’ve reached the ramp. Norra, now inaudible, is shouting something into her comm. Maybe there’s still time for them to escape. Or maybe this is the last Sloane will ever see of them. She doesn’t know why she’d expect to see them again, if they live. Does she think they’d rescue her?

“One final farewell,” Rax is murmuring in her ear. “To your friends. To your Empire. And to Jakku.”

She waits until they’re at the top of the ramp before she slams her fist into his groin.

After decades of service, Rae Sloane has _never_ learned her place. She couldn’t have held herself back if she _tried_.

Rax wheezes like a stalling engine and falls flat on his rear end. It’s a shame Sloane hasn’t the time to laugh. She prepares an attack, rocking forward on the tips of her boots, and then a warning thought catches her. She doesn’t drop down, but instead dances around him — he snaps his legs closed and presses an arm between them, rolling onto his side — until she’s behind his head.

Don’t risk anything by getting down on his level. She knows her own weak spot is her gut wound, and the painkillers are leaving her system. Every move she makes could be rearranging her organs, and her side is stiff from swelling.

Maybe her instincts were right, because Rax recovers swiftly. He rolls onto his stomach, glaring up at her.

She’d love to kick him down the ramp, but there isn’t time. Giving him a parting snarl, Sloane stumbles through the bay doors, towards the cockpit.

The rebel pilot has already leapt out of his chair and is pulling a blaster from his hip holster. “Not another step!” he shouts.

Sloane vibrates with an impatience more potent than anger, and stamps her heels on the floor. “Take off! Take off _now!_ ”

The man sees the urgency, but he’s open to attack if he sits down completely, so he keeps yelling and waving the blaster until Sloane has backed all the way to the door.

The ship lurches in an unsteady takeoff while the pilot tries to manage the controls with one hand. They’re rising above the desert plain, aiming for the atmosphere. All is chaos on the ground and in the sky, ships battling in orbit and a web of cracks spreading across the surface of Jakku.

Just as Sloane starts wondering what to do about this unwanted companion, she’s shoved aside.

Rax tosses the shah-tezh pieces with a flick of his wrist, right into the pilot’s face — and closes in without pausing, every motion perfectly casual and deliberate.

It’s such an odd move that the man freezes in bemusement, eyes tracking the pieces as they bounce harmlessly off his brow. While the blaster is yanked from his hands, and then Rax fires a hole through the man’s chest and flings the body off its seat to the floor.

_That takes care of that,_ Sloane thinks blankly. She saw everything, and still can’t believe it wasn’t wizardry, just sleight-of-hand. Surely she saw the Force at work, Rax summoning the blaster to his hand.

Conveniently, she is unburdened by thoughts of prudence and planning, and doesn’t care how he did it.

In the precious few seconds Rax needs to launch the ship into hyperspace, as the black space outside the viewports warps into a tunnel of light, Sloane lunges at his back and cinches her arms around his throat. Pressed flush against him, she realizes her instincts were right — the hardest place for him to shoot her would be here. He’d have to contort his shooting arm around as if to scratch his back with the barrel. Risky business.

Her teeth are at the nape of his neck. A mad, beast-like frenzy in her blood has her wondering if it’s possible to bite down and sever the brain stem.

He groans and forces the sound into a stilted laugh. “Oh, _don’t_. Don’t you _dare._ ”

“Put it down,” she hisses — it’s worth a try.

“No, no.” He heaves another breathless laugh. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Rax is faintly visible as a stretched-out reflection in the transparisteel pane. He’s tightening his free hand into a fist, pressing it to his own solar plexus. Like he’s damming up a breach.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says, as his breathing steadies. “Not like this, not alone. But of course you had to.”

“What do you mean?”

His hand, the one holding the blaster, reaches back. Lays the gun against her hip, the barrel stroking the side of her leg. He could injure her, but not kill her. She could snatch the weapon away if she’s willing to temporarily sacrifice a limb.

“Why not stay on Chandrila and spill secrets to the New Republic? Play the innocent. I thought you’d either return to me or throw your lot in with them.”

“I wasn’t going to plead for their mercy.” Perhaps if she constricts his throat slowly, he won’t notice he’s going light-headed.

“Nor for mine.”

“Never.”

The blaster drops out of his hand.

Sloane blinks and twists her head to look at it. A trap?

He could strike her in the face with his elbow if she leans down. He could grab her by her hair. He could— But she could still shoot him.

A drop of liquid falls from his gloved fingertips.

As Sloane registers that, she also notices the sticky wetness staining her sleeves. She pulls away in disgust, staring at the red smears on her forearms.

When Rax turns around, the skin of his throat is ashen but blotted with blood. His coat is sprouting small stains all over his chest. His mouth is red, lips split and chapped. A thin line, like a papercut, opens up from the corner of his eye down his cheekbone.

“What in _hell,_ ” Sloane whispers.

He smiles, gruesomely with how it cracks his lips further. Sloane thinks, bizarrely, of the stitched-mouthed slaves the Huttess kept. She’d wondered what it would be like to pull those hooks out, and now, even seeing it on Rax, she can’t help but wince.

The smile turns sympathetic, which Sloane finds terribly unpleasant, worse than a sneer.

“You think this troubles me?” Rax licks his lips, and, seemingly with effort, wrenches his gaze away from her. “Scars don’t heal. The flesh is never quite the same. At times they can…”

She’s heard of this. “Malnourishment.”

He nods approvingly. “There isn’t just one way to starve. So many  _flavors_ of starvation, just as many as satiation, you’d think. Yes. Jakku sharpens a body, doesn’t it?” A flicker of self-consciousness, like he knows whatever he’s done to himself over the past few months, it wasn’t particularly sane. “And it too is… scarred, in a way. The world itself. Waiting to bleed.”

She backs away from him, kicking the blaster along behind her with her heel. “Stop it. Stop talking in riddles. You’ve dragged me out here, tell me something I can _understand_ or shut up.” She darts down to grab the weapon and point it at his chest, though it feels useless now. “What’s going on? And where is this ship headed?”

“Far away.” Rax stares out into hyperspace. “I didn’t reactivate the planet. All I could do was hold it back. There’s only so much longer I can—”

“You’re still holding it back. That’s why you’re…”

“Yes.”

Something about that sends shivers down her spine. Why?

“How… how far away—” her voice wavers— “do we have to be?”

“From Jakku?” he asks. He hums a note of — what? acknowledgement? It’s meaningless, an empty gesture.

“I have noticed,” Sloane says sharply, “that you do not like talking about anything.”

Rax struggles for a response to that, proving Sloane’s point.

She presumes he doesn’t want to tell her because he wants to make a spectacle of it. He wants the answer to reveal itself dramatically. Sloane is sure of this much, because it’s the most predictable thing about him.

Yet with his body bursting slowly apart, from a dreadful sympathetic pressure connecting him to a planet already billions of miles away, it seems more as if he holds down this secret, and he could reveal it, but it would have to tear its way out of him.

Sloane backs all the way to the door, clutching the blaster as a lifeline. She wants to kill him, but thinks — it isn’t right, not yet. She fears it being less triumphant than she needs this moment to be. It was easier to put the turncoat trooper out of his misery on Jakku, because his back had been turned, and he’d been holding on to hope. He didn’t deserve it, of course, but it was the only option. And he’d—

The rebel pilot lying on the floor is still breathing. A thin nasal whistle, grating even if it’s slight, because it’s futile. Whether he’s clinging to life on purpose or waiting for it all to be over.

“Fine, then. Don’t tell me.” Spinning on her heel, Sloane flees the room, pressing an arm against her aching side. _Kill him,_ she thinks, _both of them_ , but she’s afraid it would be merciful. Mercy is nauseating right now, it’s a service she doesn’t want to provide. Fate has not been merciful to her — it isn’t fair.

The shuttle has a single gunner’s seat on the back half of the ship, which offers a rear view through a transparisteel bubble.

As Sloane approaches, she thinks — _it’s an afterimage, my eyes are being fooled_. It’s just a dark blot hovering in the center of her vision. She massages her eyes with the heel of her palm, and it’s like wiping goggles and finding them more smudged than before; the darkness grows.

That darkness grows as an inky cloud bubbling at the distant center of the bright blue tunnel. Staring at it makes Sloane’s tongue prickle as if she’s sucking on a live wire.

And it’s following, chasing, a storm in pursuit. She braces herself against the gunner’s chair.

“What is that?” she whispers. Her hand flies up to cover her mouth. She really thinks she’s going to scream, or cry.

Hyperspace shouldn’t _look_ like that.

“That,” Rax says wanly, “is the Contingency.”

“It’s catching up,” Sloane says, stupefied, pressing her fist to her teeth. _No_ , she pleads silently. _I’m not ready to go. I’m not. Not into this perversion of space._

“The ship isn’t fast enough. Would any ship be, though…?” His staggered, limping footsteps come up behind her and he lays his hands on her shoulders. “Then there isn’t much time.”

She heaves in air. “ _You_ did this.” _What have you done?_

His tone is clipped, with raw edges. Angry at her for not understanding, when it’s his own fault. He saved this for the last — the very last — moment. What for? Did he expect her to appreciate it?

“This is your Empire, Rae Sloane. This is…” He makes a resentful jab. “ _This is real_. This was here before you were. _I_ was there before you—“

His fingers dig into her forearms. She doesn’t bother reacting.

“I saw this built before there was a throne, or an Emperor. Before the war that destabilized the galaxy. This was Sheev Palpatine’s vision. His design. His gift to the galaxy: its _death_.”

“ _Why!?_ ” The question wrenches itself from her throat.

“You didn’t know him as I did. If you did? You wouldn’t need to ask.”

It appalls her that he’s reveling in her ignorance. Though it must be the only satisfaction left for him.

Rax sounds like he’s recounting a dream upon waking, in a distant, sing-song tone. “It will spread through hyperspace, from the source, the planet. It... has no name. An insatiable hunger, a dark cancer. That’s all I know,” he adds in a hurried whisper. “I was never told, Rae, that old bastard never trusted me, never thought me worthy. Look! He promised a destiny, and there it is.”

It will spread. She thinks— _The Emperor condemned us all. This is what the man who built the Empire believed in._ Sloane can’t even push back against this as she has before, because she can be no Emperor, there is no Empire. It must have already been swallowed up. The New Republic fleet is gone. Norra and Brentin Wexley — gone.

“He told me many things, he told me of this in riddles, or in metaphors. I may not have understood it then, but I will never forget a word he said to me.”

“Why—! Why are you… still talking like that? As if you’re trying to teach me a lesson…”

“I thought we’d escape, but it’s enough for you to _see_ as I do.”

“Enough for what!? The afterlife? I don’t plan on sharing that with you!” She shudders violently, and wrenches herself away from him. “Is this a lie? A trick? A trap? A test?” Takes aim at his head with the blaster.

Rax flits his eyes between the blaster and the viewport.

He, like Sloane, cannot look at the dark cloud for long. It is flat, like a hole cut out of existence, and the cloudiness at the edges and writhing forms within might be optical illusions. Moving the eyes inward from the edges deadens the mind. A hole cut out of consciousness too. Around it, the cerulean cocoon of hyperspace violently unravels.

Sloane jabs Rax’s forehead with the barrel. “Want me to end it before _that_ does?” And how dearly she wants to make one final act of defiance. But it isn’t defiant. It’s what he wants. “How does it feel, knowing the Emperor betrayed you?"

He swallows, cheeks pinched in. The blood from the cuts is drying quickly into dark clots that crack into crumbs as his features shift. In places it’s as if tiny black-shelled insects have swarmed on his skin.

“He strung you along. He promised you greatness. A lie.”

“Yes,” he says.

“You knew this would happen.” An accusation.

“Of course not! Do you think I want the galaxy torn to shreds?”

“I think you did.”

“One wretched, backwater planet! Idiotic squabbling armies. An Empire that _failed_. Why do you think I sent the New Republic to Akiva, to the Imperial Future Council? To see what the Empire’s future was, in a galaxy that had come to hate it. You… you proved what had to be done. We’re not so different, are we?”

_I planted a bomb in my own ship and fled in a shuttle_ , Sloane thinks.

Then— “No.” She stiffens. First he blames the Emperor and now, in a subtle way, he blames her. But she can turn that against him. “Because if we’re not so different, then you’re a coward and you knew better. And you saw plans in motion and you could have stopped them but you waited for an explanation because surely it would all turn out to mean something, it had to have an answer.”

The ship has begun to vibrate. It wails like a revenant or a dying sea leviathan; the durasteel hum is a keen and discordant note that gets into her very bones and sets them ringing.

“I don’t want to die,” Sloane seethes, and spills tears, elbowing Rax aside, staggering back to the shuttle cockpit. Her throat feels bruised from the clogging mucous alone. There is no room for dignity left. Already, there is nothing left in the galaxy that honors her. “I want to go home.”

She doesn’t know at first what she means by that, and then she does.

The shuttle doesn’t have all the features an Imperial ship would have, but like most cheap commercial transports refitted for war, it’s easy enough to turn it on itself, vent volatile gases from one chamber to another, stall the inhibitors, overload the ventilators. The shuttle’s computer makes it easy for her, as if it wants the same.

He is contrite, which may as well be mockery. “There’s nothing you can do.”

She curls her fingers around a handle and pulls it back. “Yes, there is,” she mutters.

The view of blue becomes black, dusted with twinkling stars. And at the back of the ship, the hyperdrive roars in its death throes.

It isn’t the cold of space she meets at the end, not the void, but searing fire at her back, a bloom of light.


	4. Chapter 4

Leia Organa steps outside of her apartment, onto the balcony overlooking Hanna City. The baby will be due any time soon. Her doctor has advised her to walk, but they might not have meant her to do so in the early morning.

She has been plagued by nightmares. Grasping darkness, finding her in her bed and stifling her attempts to cry out. And she knows it troubles her baby, her little almost-born boy, who doesn’t deserve to be frightened before he’s even seen the world.

Privately, Leia worries she did something terrible by reaching out to him and linking their minds. Because as much as she felt him, he must have felt her. A baby can’t comprehend adult anxieties and emotions.

But this fear angers her because she hasn’t misused powers; she’s done what any mother might. She hasn’t been trained in the Force, aside from Luke’s patient sessions, which she thinks he might have offered so he wouldn’t be alone in his studies. The Force is not isolation. It is connection to all living beings, isn’t it? Then how could a connection between a mother and a baby be wrong? They are literally bonded by the flesh within her body.

_Maybe I’m the one who can’t handle_ his _emotions_ , she wonders. Perhaps it has stung her pride to realize her baby could have nightmares. She thinks, _am I cold inside, am I pretending to love, was I even surprised when Luke told me who my father was?_

No. She places her hands on the railing and fills her lungs with dawn air, imagining she is drinking in the soft colors on the horizon.

Luke said — he is my father. Luke said — you are my sister. So terribly indirect. Trying to put himself between her and Vader, as he always did. He is her family, and she loves him, and if being his sister meant being Vader’s daughter, she’ll—

She’s not sure. Why does she need both? What does blood mean, anyway? Luke would always be her brother in spirit.

But it isn’t just blood, she reminds herself. She and Luke met each other before they met anyone else. Perhaps their minds touched, perhaps they shared dreams and nightmares.

Leia can’t forget her parents, though, who raised her and loved her and— should have been here, to hold their first grandchild.

No one is truly gone to the Force, so they say. Leia lifts her chin, composes her face as she would to greet a crowd — but she is, in a way, greeting the teeming life energy she’s only just begun to really sense. She doesn’t believe she can find Bail and Breha Organa the way that Luke speaks to ghosts, but surely they must be reaching out to her eagerly, waiting to envelop her with congratulations.

Leia shivers a bit. A chill passes, blowing through the fabric of her nightgown.

She knows she should be aiming for tranquility. But she doesn’t like to be thwarted. Again, it feels like she’s being punished for touching the Force, like a crueler parent slapping a child’s hand away from a shiny object. _I am not going to be tempted_ , she thinks. _This isn’t attachment. It’s love, and love is light._

Cold bursts in her mouth and sends a numbing shock up her brain, like biting ice.

_Stop_ , she thinks. _Enough. Enough of this_. _I will not be turned away._

_Are they angry with me?_ Questions wriggle up from her gut into her throat. _Do they blame me for what happened to our home, our people?_

Of course they don’t. It isn’t like her to doubt them. Even in the moment when Alderaan was erased in a cloud of fire, she had felt a fierce dart of love pierce her heart, as if her parents had taken aim at the deadly moon in the sky and made a parting shot of: _Leia, be strong._ And she _had_ been, all for them.

Her baby is kicking his tiny feet. And she has a strange sense that he is shivering, and she can feel it.

_Why can’t I send him my love? I love him. I will love him as much as they loved me._

But in that instant, Leia knows something is terribly wrong.

It is as if she’s been sucked out of an airlock into space. Every bit of heat in her body is snuffing out, a gust claiming billions of tiny candles. And it continues, beyond what she thought possible. A body can only be so frozen, surely, but not in this case.

She tilts her head up and thinks it might crack off if she’s turned to ice, though it doesn’t, and she is still made of flesh and blood.

There are few stars at this hour, but the moon is hanging overhead. Then, it’s gone. Replaced by a disk of flat black. The change comes quickly, in the blink of an eye.

An eclipse. Something has appeared out of hyperspace between the moon and the planet.

_Another Death Star_ , she thinks, aghast. It’s the only explanation. It was only a matter of time before it found her again, ready to finish what her blood father started.

But it’s worse. The blackness dilates. As if the entire hemisphere of the heavens are an eye, the eye of a predator in the instant before striking.

Who could do this? There is only one figure so evil that Leia knows of.

The void does strike, stamping down from above. It was an eye, now it is the sole of a boot. Leia frantically flings a pitiful gasp of emotion into the cosmos. Just as her parents did, but she has no time to choose which emotion comes out.

It doesn’t feel like love. If it finds its mark, it will injure. _For my enemy_ , she thinks.

Bizarrely, the image that comes to her isn’t the Emperor. If he is responsible, a dead grasping ghost taking revenge on them all, he might revel in her helpless anger. But Leia’s mind has been dwelling on recent events. Assassinations attempts. Reminding her of—

Another enemy. _Is this you, Rae Sloane? You couldn’t leave Chandrila alone._

But, judging by the ringing silence in the Force, she doesn’t think there’s much left in the galaxy — not heroes, nor villains, nor the common humble souls that live in between — to hear her.

 

Something like a faint transmission, a wave of thought, just organized enough to not be static, beams through the cosmos. Like all traces in the Force, it is unbound by time as well as space. It can leap over centuries, and make hairpin turns around seconds, traversing the infinite connections between those elusive minuscule Whills, who harmonize with each other no matter how far apart they are.

Some galaxies in the universe have only a few of these strange entities strewn about in their midst. One or two in every millionth solar system.

But some are fully saturated, to the point where these beings, with their unfathomable connections to each other, carve tunnels through space the way ants do in soil, transferring matter and energy, singing in tones of bright and shadow, and communing with the symbionts that have evolved to use the Whills for energy — and the bigger organisms that evolved to house those symbionts in their cells.

Detached from one of these bigger organisms, the thought wave steers through the highway of space-time. It aims backwards — because there is little left in the forward direction.

The Whills of the future are dead or dying.

So there is urgency in the thought wave. Rules being broken, or at the very least bent.

The thought wave stores a cluster of images, sounds, sensations, emotions, cogitations. Somewhat of a snapshot into what once was a mind.

A loud thought amid the cluster spells out: _Sheev Palpatine is a liar._

The thought wave passes another transmission, overlaps with it. This thought wave sounds quite similar — the same cluster of instruments played this motif, but it is a different melody.

The other sings: _Take her with you_.

_Her_. Yes. She is… valuable, in a way he has no words for.

And then that transmission veers off into the very recent past, seeking a mind that resonates with its timbre, trying to impress a message onto someone in the hope of changing the future. But it will be to no avail.

The echo of Gallius Rax that continues on its journey into the past picks up a bit of that other echo and incorporates it into itself.  _Try harder next time_ , it admonishes.

 

There is a version of the galaxy, perhaps the first one where the Emperor’s plan was brought to fruition, where Rax laid an unconscious Sloane out on the stone steps in the Observatory, after lifting her off the bodies of the two rebels who had accompanied her.

The husband went down first, when Rax tore the blaster out of his hands, and then the wife put up a fair struggle, burning a gash in his shoulder with the blaster before he regained control, shot her in the chest, and then the throat.

Then he threw the weapon away, sent it skidding across the floor until it tumbled over the lip of the glowing pit. A rash decision, but he refused to use it to finish his fight with Sloane.

If she would be the last person he would kill on Jakku, he would do it without a weapon, just as it had been with the first person he killed.

She fought like a demon to the very end, but even with his injured shoulder, that early advantage he’d claimed by opening up her old injury decided the fight. He had her pressed to the ground, thumbs digging into her trachea, while she clawed at his hands, and her struggling steadily weakened.

And then he’d let go. He knew she had to die, but—

He admired her conviction. Her _faith_ in the Empire, her love for it. If only he’d been given a chance to rule the Empire with her by his side, with all her love and conviction for it close at hand.

Rax did not believe he loved the Empire. Perhaps he hated it. Its destruction certainly satisfied him.

Then it was fair to let Sloane die with her Empire. Loyal to the end. It had a poetic ring.

Later, aboard the _Imperialis_ , drowning his turbulent thoughts with opera in the private music hall, he didn’t register much beyond a jolt as the ship was caught in the tip of the encroaching storm, and a rush of terror as an emptiness colder than ice filled his veins and rent his body apart.

 

But now he knows what happened. Or he knew, and the echo of that knowledge casts itself back, back to where it seems to think it is needed most, broadcasting a warning.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jakku again, but different.

Putting one foot in front of another becomes a litany of promises Rae Sloane makes to herself, to get past the pain and fatigue. If she goes one more step, she’ll give herself permission to slap the next person she meets. If she goes another, she’ll spend a month vacationing on a pleasure yacht. Whatever mad idea clamors for attention in her head, she tells it — yes, yes, that too. Anything you want, Force damn it.

Not if she drops the man she’s got draped over her shoulders. That is a firm condition.

With a pained grunt, Rae gets her foot over the top of the hill. She stumbles the next few steps, relieved to be on flat ground, and eager not to tumble all the way down, back to the bottom of the shallow valley where she left the speeder and its empty fuel tank.

Now she keeps her eyes trained on the smattering of orange lights that break up the deep desert night. Campfires, by the look of them, though some are off the ground, in windows of a building made of packed ochre earth.

Rae keeps on lurching towards these lights. She spotted them by sheer luck as the speeder charged across open sand dunes, and that sinuous Huttess had mentioned a church or habit house. Spiritual competition for the snake who saw herself a goddess.

Goddesses were easily offended, much to Rae’s chagrin. She and Brentin barely got out alive. 

Between her and the lights, she picks out another structure, a skeleton of a tent made of metal poles and rags. In the dark, all forms are unclear, but there is what seems to be an effigy made of rough rock, suggesting the shape of a cloaked man sitting cross-legged. In her time on Jakku, she has seen statues like these before, many in the form of small trinkets, some carved on lintels, or outside mine entrances.

Around the shrine, there are offerings of dried flowers, weighed down by stones tied to the stems, strewn about. Rae’s boot kicks one by accident, and she winces. There had better not be any mad slaves to take offense.

But if the worshippers here are halfway sane, perhaps they’ve come to the right place.

“Hope you’re still alive,” she grunts.

“Me too,” says the man she’s dragging, surprising her.

“Thought you were out cold,” she says.

“I’m cold, all right. Did get some rest.”

Must have been nice for him, she thinks. “Let’s trade places, then.”

She hadn’t meant it, but her companion seems to take the idea to heart and tries to lower himself to the ground. When he tries to bear his own weight on his feet, he groans in pain, and Rae tries to hoist him back up, but the moment of respite has shut down her every muscle.

Brentin Wexley falls flat on his back and doesn’t get up. Rae curses and drops to her knees, exhausted.

A light startles her when it appears in her periphery. Her pulse spikes in a particularly primal way.

The effigy in the tent has an oil lamp in its hands and is slowly uncovering its wrappings with wizened, trembling hands. 

It hadn’t been made of stone at all. Just a cloak made of something thick so the breeze did not make it flutter like the rest of the cloth around the shrine.

“Brentin,” Rae mutters. “There’s a—“ 

No response this time.

The figure is slowly getting up, legs shaking. Rae clears her parched throat, frustrated by how this decrepit-looking old monk is able to get around, when she’s too weak to stand. And the figure turns to look at her, face still obscured by the cloak.

“Ahem. Good… fellow. My friend and I… need… ah… assist…” She wavers and falls.

The monk rings a set of deep, sonorant metal wind chimes. The pure notes are followed by sounds of chatter and commotion from the building ahead. A cluster of figures are already heading towards the shrine, crossing in front of the firelights.

Soon, Rae is being lifted from her involuntary prostration by many a firm grip. “Tend to my companion first,” she says, head swimming from the sudden motions. “He’s in worse shape.”

“You must be new to Jakku,” someone carrying her says somberly. “We tend to the ones who have a better chance of survival. Would that be you or him?”

“Quite churlish for monks, aren’t you?” Rae snaps. “I will not answer that.”

“Churlish, perhaps. Some people call this wisdom. Hm. You seem well enough to speak.”  
  
“I shall be unconscious shortly,” she tells the anchorite as haughtily as she can, and proves herself right.

 

Rae spends the night in a large but primitive hospice room, with rounded earthen walls and narrowing ceiling flue over a central firepit. Her mind is half-present for every sting of pain as she’s put on a scratchy cot and has ointments smeared over burns on her chest and legs. It becomes a sort of torture, that she can’t fight back against. Then it dulls to an annoyance, and then she’s left alone for a while, and she misses the attention. When she returns to full consciousness, it is less like a light turning on, and instead an arduous process of gathering the energy and nerve to think clearly. An unglamorous behind-the-scenes look at all the restorative processes meant to be subconscious during sleep. This time, she has to direct everything herself.

An anchorite with an eye patch approaches as Rae tries to sit up, and offers her a cup of pungent liquid.

“In your condition, this is better for the dehydration than water,” the woman tells her. “It will settle your stomach.”

It’s warm, but not hot, and has a savory taste mixed with sweetness. Not bad at first, but a bit grainy and cloying, the familiar aftertaste of medicine. She’d much rather have water, but she only thinks about her preferences after she gulps enough liquid down to quench the urgency of her thirst.

Though, once the liquid is inside her, her body can pull the water out, and she perceives this process, as much as she perceives the chemicals relaxing the muscles that might spasm and push everything up. It is an intriguing thing to imagine, and she wonders if it’s a mildly psychotropic effect, if she’s still slightly high. She remembers being forced to inhale a mist through a leather mask, while her burned skin was exposed. The drug hadn’t dulled any pain, but it kept her from moving.

She puppets her throat and tongue and lips to speak. “Thank you. Thank you for everything. Is Brentin…? The man I was with.”

The woman gestures to another bed on the other side of the firepit. Two other dark-robed monks are standing by it, seemingly reciting chants. Their faces are hidden by hoods, but one of them is very short, and their voice has a higher pitch. A child?

“He is recovering, too. Give him time. Unlike you, he needed surgery.”

Rae pulls a memory out of her mental file. The ground exploding underneath Brentin as he scrambled out of the cave entrance. “On his feet?” The woman nods. Rae explains, “We took a risk with a plume escaping Niima. Not a friend of yours, I’ve heard.”

The woman purses her lips and nods. Her features may be more lined by sun exposure than Rae’s, but otherwise seems close to her own age. “You know Jakku well for an outsider.”

“You don’t have to be here long to learn to watch your step. But…” Rae peers at the woman accusingly. “How do you know I’m an outsider? Last night, was it you who said— I must be new to Jakku?”

The anchorite returns to the central fire and refills the cup of medicinal tea from a cauldron suspended over low coals. She brings it back while restraining a beatific smile. “The Eremite foretold your arrival. An outsider would arrive on this world seeking truth and redemption. After weeks of fruitless wandering, you would come to us at last for aid.”

“Oh,” Rae says, cheeks growing hot. “It seems I’ve stumbled into a prophesy. I’m very flattered.” She accepts the cup and mulls over her opinion on this. She was scornful of Niima’s god complex, so she can’t embrace this wholeheartedly. But then she’d also like to rub it in that worm’s face, just a bit.

Rae Sloane has never been a figure of myth. She is sure she disapproves of the idea. But it would be better to go along with it, just for the sake of convenience? To keep her newfound allies?

“Is the Eremite,” she finally asks, “that man in the shrine?” From the way people invoked the name on this planet, Rae assumed he was a character from ancient legends. It could have been why she thought him a statue at first.

“Essentially. That is his avatar.”

“Right.” Rae swings her legs around to the side of the cot and starts to stand. “I’ll be talking to him eventually, I expect. No time like the present?” Jakku, aside from its thrilling habit of venting steam from cracks in the ground, has been so dreary and dull. Everything is waiting, slipping into a stupor while time eats passing hours, while gnats gather to drink your sweat. Rae is done with that.

The anchorite shoos her back down into bed with reproachful hand gestures. “Oh, no, please, don’t waste your energy. It really would be like talking to a statue. I can lead you to pray before him later, if you wish.”

Rae tries to squash her frustration. She knows she shouldn’t get on the wrong side of another living god, even if she is tired of living gods and their antics.

“The Eremite’s vessel is wracked by agony,” the woman explains. “He proves his worthiness by completely controlling his body, and he only allows himself movement for a single hour each day.”

“Well, who am I to tell him how to live?” Rae mutters, settling back into bed. Of course there’d be waiting involved, in anything quintessentially Jakkuvian. Particularly their religions. Niima forced her and Brentin to wait for hours, bound and blindfolded, feigning submission, until they were almost too stiff to stand. This seems like the same, just inverted.

“Suffering can sharpen your senses, can’t it? You may become aware of your body as a machine, a ship you captain. The Eremite senses beyond himself, seeing far across the world through the vibrations in the ground.”

“With the Force?” Rae asks impatiently. This could be what she’s been looking for. Especially since the ramblings about suffering and self-mastery remind her of the twisted sermons of the Emperor’s advisor, Yupe Tashu, who spurred her on this quest.

Tashu was the one who gave her the name of this planet. Called it the inscription of the Emperor’s Will.

The woman doesn’t respond, and instead stares across the room, her jaw starting to drop.

The other anchorites clam up as well, and the child grips their adult minder’s hand.

The man framed by the door wears the same dark, plain robes as the others. All that marks him as special are the carved bone crutches under his arms, and the stunned reverence from the others.

Rae recognizes that trembling gait, though she doesn’t need to, to guess who he is.

The Eremite takes the steps leading inside slowly, reminding Rae of how she dragged herself up the hill to reach the habit house. Even the placement of each crutch is laborious.

No one moves to help the man; in fact, the anchorites withdraw, the one-eyed woman in particular, whose mouth flattens into a line and whose posture becomes stiff, almost strict.

Perhaps the man is too holy to touch. Rae thinks it won’t add to his holiness if he falls flat on his face, which his wavering frame threatens with every step. What is visible of his features under the hood shows how much effort it takes him to walk. He breathes harshly through his nose, his teeth worry his lower lip as he makes calculations for each movement.

It is clear what he came here for. He approaches Rae’s bedside. She apprehends him warily, again feeling too flattered by the special attention.

The easiest approach would be to play dumb, pretend she knows nothing of their ways. Pretend she hadn’t just been lectured about him by one of his followers. “Ah…” Rae straightens up. “Were you the one who found us? Last night?”

“I am,” the man whispers.

“Would you like to sit?” She indicates the end of her bed.

The Eremite nods and lowers himself down, holding the crutches together and leaning his brow against them. His hands, as Rae noticed before, are deeply veined and wrinkled.

The one-eyed woman clicks her tongue to her teeth in disapproval. _Was that for me_ , Rae wonders, _or for the Eremite?_ But she still can be smug. _You wanted me to pray to him, but here he is, paying respects to me_. 

She much prefers this audience with a god to her ordeal with Niima.

But when the man pushes back his hood, Rae is overwhelmed in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

He isn’t an old man, though his face is deeply marred by lines and veins, the way his hands are. They aren’t the natural marks of age. His skin is tight where it should be loose, clinging to his skull. If the effect were more severe he would look mummified. His hair has gray roots at his temples, but much of it is dark. And his eyes, glancing up at her, are keen, black as the eyes of the mice that Rae and Brentin had to keep dumping out of their packs and boots in the morning after pitching a tent. They were bold little creatures, not meek like their counterparts on other worlds.

And amid all that, there is something… “I feel like I’ve met you before,” Rae says, impressed by her own honesty.

The Eremite is impressed as well. His eyes open wider, and he raises his chin to regard her more openly. “You have,” he says. The voice rings familiar, too. “I thought you had forgotten.”

She claws through her memories, trying to place him, and comes back empty-handed. “Apparently… yes. Yes, I have.”

“Then… don’t let it trouble you. Let us meet again.” He taps his thumb absently against the bone crutch handles, before leaning them against the bedpost. “It is a good meeting.”

Rae considers this. It wasn’t a particularly dignified one for her, though it puts her in his debt. “An eventful one,” she concedes. “Rae Sloane. Formerly Admiral Sloane, of the Galactic Empire.” She extends her hand, then finds it too bare and vulnerable hovering in the space between them.

The Eremite clasps it before she can withdraw. His palms are cold and clammy. Slight tremors in his thin fingers remind Rae of the warning vibrations she learned to detect before what the locals called a plume, where steam unexpectedly jetted up like a tripped land mine.

Rae forces herself to relax. Her anxiety must be from the strangeness of it all.

The man’s grip is gentle, giving a reassuring squeeze. “It is a pleasure, Formerly Admiral Sloane.”

Rae scans the room. The woman with the eye patch has migrated over to join the pair by Brentin’s cot. She has her hand on the child’s hooded head, pushing it down in a deferential bow, while exchanging furtive, meaningful glances with her fellow adult.

“And you are the Eremite,” Rae prompts.

The Eremite nods, and casts his eyes down. “Ah. Well. I cannot stay. My visit has been most unusual.”

“Back to being a statue?” Rae checks the anchorites, notes the woman’s pinched expression, and places her other hand over the Eremite’s. “Shall I speak with you again, later?”

“I insist,” he says, and leans closer. “So I might hear what brought you to Jakku. I hope it is a good story.”

He has noticed her glance across the room, and the corner of his mouth quirks up. They share a moment, an odd spark of intimate understanding. Co-conspirators against stodgy traditionalism, despite how peculiar it is in context. Rae is momentarily entranced. She doesn’t want to mis-categorize her feelings, but does she find him attractive? She admits he would not be _conventionally_ so, to a human. His disfigurement transforms him, almost strips him of his species.

So this is what half a year in a New Republic prison has done to her. She’s been addled by their hedonism and open-mindedness.

“If that’s how I can repay your hospitality…” she offers.

“It would be a fine payment.” The Eremite takes his crutches in hand and rises from her bed. This time, he finds his balance a bit more easily. As soon as there’s enough space, the anchorite woman moves to stand between him and Rae’s bed.

Rae, sure this conversation has broken several taboos, hides a smirk. It might be ungrateful, given the anchorites’ charity, but she deserves to get her way after everything she has suffered. After everything she has had to sacrifice.

 _This is the galaxy smiling on me,_ she thinks. _This is redemption._


End file.
